Control
by drakontion
Summary: Inspired by a conversation with the KAAS girls. Dark fic. An alternative view of Shepard's "resurrection".


"…But she's just one woman. If we lose Shepard humanity might well follow."

"Then see to it that we _don't_ lose her." A deep puff of breath, exhale of smoke.

"Any cost, Operative Lawson. Any cost."

oOo

A tall, statuesque woman in a clinging suit scowls as she studies the news just broadcast. The _Normandy_, destroyed, somewhere in the Terminus systems. Unknown attackers reported. Most hands survived, save for 20 crewmen. And its commanding officer. The Illusive Man was not going to be happy, not at all.

oOo

A heavy breath wafts pungent smoke through the air. She stifles a cough as it irritates her throat.

"I thought I told you not to lose her."

"Sir, we had no warning, no knowledge of this attack... her movements were top secret and the _Normandy _was stealthed the entire time she was between relays... we had no way of knowing..."

"Not good enough, Operative Lawson. Your job was to make sure she didn't die. Now she's dead. This will hamper our plans considerably."

"I... apologise sir. I have no excuses."

A grunt. The glowing ember of his cigarette traces an arabesque in the darkness, and she shifts in surprise as a form she hadn't noticed steps out into the semi-gloom around his chair.

"This is Feron. You will work with him to recover her. And you will bring her back to me, or as much of her as you can find, so that we can rebuild her. I don't care if it's her body or her head or just a scraping of her cells. I want her here. Is that understood?"

She swallows. "Yes, sir."

"Now go. I do not want to see you again until you have brought Shepard back."

oOo

She pours over flight plans, plotting trajectories and calculating numbers until they swim before her. She triangulates the Normandy's possible course on her last fateful mission and narrows her attack point to a small band of space around a dim star in the Amada system. She snorts to herself. 'Small band' being in the order of approximately two thousand billion square kilometres...

She rubs an aching forehead and bends to crunch her numbers once again.

oOo

The snow shifts under her feet and she shivers. Alchera is cold and littered with the broken bones of the Normandy, the pride of the Alliance fleet. She's not superstitious but this place has her spooked.

She nods to her companions and the drell and the asari stride off to search the wreckage. She purses her lips as she watches their backs disappearing in the frigid atmosphere. She doesn't trust either of them, but she can't do this alone. Not and return home...

She types a program into her omni-tool and sets it to scan the ice and debris in front of her.

oOo

She is quietly proud, her confidence reassured, as she presents what she found to her superior. What... because you could hardly call the twisted, mangled mess of tissue and bone _Shepard _any more. The flesh was freeze dried and burnt, then frozen again. Vacuum and crystallisation had damaged the delicate cells beyond repair. She did not know how the Illusive Man was going to get this project to work. It would be impossible to rebuild her. Impossible.

He sniffs, looking over her prize, laid open and violate before him. "Is this all you found?"

"All we could find, sir. We combed the crash site, found some other bodies, but this was all we could recover of Shepard."

"It will have to do. The project is yours, Operative Lawson. I don't need to remind you of its importance to humanity. Bring Shepard back, the way she was. We need her."

oOo

_...this is your mother. Hannah Shepard. She is currently the captain of the SSV Orizaba. This is your father. Jason Shepard. He is currently executive officer serving aboard the SSV Sydney. You grew up on stations and ships, following your parents through the stars. You always wanted to be amongst them..._

_...age of 18, when you enlisted in the military. You were accepted into basic training, specialising as a Vanguard, then marked for Special Ops. Your candidacy in the N7 program was sponsored by Captain David Anderson, who mentored you throughout training..._

_...deadly attack on Akuze, which only you survived. Thresher maws came up from underneath the encampment, taking your patrol by surprise. As commanding officer of the patrol it was your responsibility to save your men. You have felt the guilt of your failure since..._

oOo

Bright light stabbed into her retinas, sending burning trails of fire into her brain. Her lungs were on fire, she couldn't suck nearly enough air into them. The choking sensation was all too familiar and she started to panic, thrashing instinctively but only one arm moved feebly. She could feel her heart thundering in her chest and dimly heard voices over it.

"Dammit Wilson, she's not ready yet! Give her the sedative!"

Other words, meaningless over the screaming inside her head, the wracking of pain throughout her body; and then the hiss of a hypo and the cool wash of sedatives through her system.

Her heart slowed and she dropped back, pain and the lights and the world around receding in waves, and the last thing she saw was a pair of blue eyes looking down into hers...

oOo

_...posting to the Normandy, under your old mentor Captain Anderson. Your shakedown cruise proved to be eventful, however, as you came into orbit around Eden Prime and discovered it under attack by geth..._

_...confirmation as a Spectre by the Council in front of Councilor Udina, Captain Anderson, and several members of your crew. After your instalment, you were then assigned to hunting the rogue Spectre Saren Arterius, who was working with the geth and..._

_...destroy Saren's facility on Virmire. You were forced to choose between two of your human crew. You spared your Staff Lieutenant, Kaidan Alenko, with whom you were having an affair. Ashley Williams was left behind to die, a death which weighed on you heavily..._

_...and the Council assigned the Normandy to patrols of Terminus space to hunt down any remaining geth. After emerging from the relay around the planet Alchera, your ship was attacked and destroyed by an unknown vessel. Most of your crew survived, but you yourself died in the attack..._

oOo

There was a shuddering and she came to, dimly, the light no longer a blinding glare but still overly bright to her newly sensitive eyes. There was pain in her face and more in her side but she could breathe, at least.

A voice intruded itself on her awareness, rudely shocking her back into some semblance of reality. "...this facility is under attack!"

She heaved herself up, groaning, muscles stiff and unyielding, and wondered how long she'd been out for. She blinked, looking around at the sterile room. White walls, white floors, hospital smell. The voice called her Shepard. She rolled the name around in her head, trying it on for size. _Shepard? Is this me?_

There was the sound of gunfire and explosions from outside but she'd heard that all her life, she thought. The voice told her to find a weapon so she did as she was bade, finding comfort in its familiar heft and weight, and then looked up. Looked at the doors. Narrowed her eyes at the logo stamped onto them, its familiar shape teasing the foggy recesses of her brain, synapses not quite making the connection.

She followed the voice's instructions until she found a man, hunkered down under attack by mechs... _not geth_... and she went to join him. He bore the same emblem and she frowned, still confused, but letting the familiar patterns of battle carry her. The man asked questions, questions that teased at her uncomfortably, and she felt the connection just waiting to snap into place...

And then he confessed, said who he worked for, what the symbols meant. _Cerberus_. The name hissed through her brain like a death sentence, and she remembered, she knew, the things Cerberus had done. Akuze. Chasca. Binthu. Nepheron. The names rolled though her head, reverberating until the noise made her want to scream. She clenched her jaw so hard she heard her teeth crack and glared at the man in front of her, so smugly bearing the insignia of the enemy. She was trapped, trapped on a Cerberus base, by Cerberus people. They'd done something to her, she could feel it, though she couldn't quite remember how she felt before. Couldn't really remember before. She froze. _My god. They wiped my memory. They brainwashed me!_

She looked at the symbol, hated it with every fibre of her being. _I am Shepard. I hunted you down for what you did. You don't control me, Cerberus._ She looked at her pistol, her fingers curved familiarly around its stock, and slowly raised the gun to her temple. The man turned around in time to see her close her eyes as she pulled the trigger, tensing in anticipation of the bullet's path through her skull...

oOo

He sighs as he watches her body slump to the floor and dials his superior. "Miranda, it's Jacob. I'm afraid we've had a bit of a setback."

oOo

She feels like a chastened schoolgirl before the principal. "What went wrong." It wasn't a question.

"We're... not entirely sure, sir. We think that the shock of the waking, along with the reconnection of past events to current situation, made her think that she had been captured by the enemy. So she killed herself."

A puff of smoke through the air. "You think. Don't think, Lawson, know." He grinds the butt out into an ashtray and lights another. "You will do it again. Fix her. She's no good to me with half her head blown off. And this time, there is to be no mistake. Is that understood?"

She's frozen. "I... yes, sir."

oOo

_…although Cerberus was rumoured to be tied to several operations it was never proven to any satisfaction that they were in fact responsible for the deaths of civilians on several colonial planets..._

_...Akuze was a coincidence, poor planning on the Alliance's part, along with the need to lay the blame on someone else. No evidence of any Cerberus connection to this tragedy was ever found..._

_...and it was later discovered, amidst the wreckage of the lab facilities, that Batarian slavers had attempted to implicate Cerberus for the atrocities committed there. Cerberus denied any involvement in this incident however and no supporting facts were found..._

oOo

There was a shuddering and she came to, dimly, the light no longer a blinding glare but still overly bright to her newly sensitive eyes. There was pain in her face and more in her side but she could breathe, at least.

A voice intruded itself on her awareness, rudely shocking her back into some semblance of reality. "...this facility is under attack!"

She heaved herself up, groaning, muscles stiff and unyielding, and wondered how long she'd been out for. She blinked, looking around at the sterile room. White walls, white floors, hospital smell. The voice called her Shepard. She rolled the name around in her head, trying it on for size. _Shepard? Yes... I am Shepard. I remember._

There was the sound of gunfire and explosions from outside but she'd heard that all her life, she thought. The voice told her to find a weapon so she did as she was bade, finding comfort in its familiar heft and weight, and then looked up. Looked at the doors. Narrowed her eyes at the logo stamped onto them, its familiar shape blaring and searing itself into her mind. _Cerberus_.

And then she remembered. Remembered waking up, exactly the same. Remembered gunfire and an urgent voice over the comm system. Remembered pain. Remembered shock. The shock wasn't the same as before, it was almost as though the same connections were denied her. She frowned, struggling, baring her teeth as she forced her brain to work.

There was an almost audible snap and it was there. And she simultaneously crowed in triumph and howled in despair as the reality of her situation sank in. _Trapped. On a Cerberus station. There's no escape. They wanted me, and they had me. But I'll never give in to them, nononononononono..._

Smiling, she raised the pistol to her head and closed her eyes as she pulled the trigger and waited for the nothingness to take her again.

oOo

Through the vid link she swears as she watches Shepard's brains, splotched with bone fragments and twists of hair, splatter across the pristine white walls in a thick spray. She dials another number.

"Wilson, get down to Recovery. We need to clean her up, again."

She grinds her perfect white teeth together as she watches the greyish pink mass slide slowly down the wall to settle in an inelegant pile on the floor.

oOo

This time he's standing, not sitting, and she knows it's a bad sign. "I hear she didn't even make it out of Recovery this time."

Her head has been aching since she saw Shepard blow her brains out and every word is a spike through her skull. "Sir, we don't know what happened. We think she remembered the previous attempt and thought she was captured, and took the first available opportunity to stop that the only way she saw how."

"I am not interested in your excuses, Lawson. Only your results."

"Sir, if I may suggest. I know you didn't like the idea of a control chip..."

He spins around to look at her and she's fixed in his gaze like a butterfly against a mat, pin descending. She swallows.

"...but I honestly think this might be the only option we have to stop this from happening again. Shepard is remarkably strong willed. She is not responding to the subliminal messages we have been feeding her while she... sleeps. She has been through enormous strain. The stress is obviously limiting her reasoning capacity and impairing her rationality. Please sir... I think this might be the only way we can bring Shepard back."

He stands and stares at her for a long excruciating moment, then turns away and regards the sullen glow of the star outside. He nods. She knows that is as much of an agreement as she will get.

oOo

_..it's dark, oh so dark, and shards of pain splinter down her spine, trailing fingers like unwelcome lovers. She had a lover once, she remembers his voice and his eyes and his smile. The voices echo through her brain but she ignores them, them and their words, all tangling up on each other like balls of wool. All different colours. Red. Yellow. Blue. Green. _

_Kittens like balls of wool. She wonders what it would be like to have a kitten._

_The words want to drag her out, their fingers are cruel talons and they're digging into her flesh like meat hooks. She wants to scream because she knows they'll tear her to pieces and then they'll eat her and she'll be gone forever, gone for good; only it didn't happen and she never goes and she's always here they can never kill her she just keeps going, keeps living, keeps surviving, no matter what happens to her or who's around her even though she can't see them in the dark because they've put out her eyes and no one will see her as she screams any more no one to love her oh Kaidan my love I'm so sorry forgive me I love you I couldn't help it it wasn't my fault please please please make it stop..._

oOo

There was a shuddering and she came to, dimly, the light no longer a blinding glare but still overly bright to her newly sensitive eyes. There was pain in her face and more in her side but she could breathe, at least.

A voice intruded itself on her awareness, rudely shocking her back into some semblance of reality. "...this facility is under attack!"

She heaved herself up, groaning, muscles stiff and unyielding, and wondered how long she'd been out for. She blinked, looking around at the sterile room. White walls, white floors, hospital smell. The voice called her Shepard. She rolled the name around in her head, trying it on for size. _Shepard? Yes... I am Shepard. I remember. I remember it all. Cerberus. Dying. I remember..._

She looked around and spied the weapons locker with the pistol. She ignored the voice's instructions (just one more voice in the tumult inside her head) and waited for the blast, rocking as it seared her skin. She giggled slightly as her flesh crisped in the heat, watching the hairs on her forearms sear away; while the voices got that much more hysterical.

She knew the heat sink for the pistol was here, she'd done it all before. She doesn't question this knowledge; the voices assured her it would be so. And there it was, and she snapped it home. She smiled and raised the gun to her head, finger flexing as she anticipated the silence after the burst of fire...

**NO**

It was the voice of God that reverberated through her brain, shocking all her other voices into cowering silence.

She snarled and tried to squeeze the trigger. It wouldn't move. She looked at it in astonishment, traitorous finger which wouldn't obey her command. How could her finger hear the voice of God? It had no ears. She swapped hands, tried again.

**NO**

She howled in thwarted rage, throwing her head back and letting the sound rip from her throat til it was raw. Mechs appeared and she turned and snarled and shot them, one shot each, directly to the head. The voices came back and urged her out the hall. _Good work_, they soothed. _Keep going. Kill them all. You're Shepard. This is what you do._

In another room the same man was shooting at more mechs. She bared her teeth and levelled the pistol at the back of his unseeing head.

**NO**

She screamed and he turned around and his face froze on seeing her, and she hated him, hated him for his too white teeth that looked into her soul and his twisty brown eyes that ate her up and spat her out. She turned to flee...

**FOLLOW HIM**

...and her muscles locked and she couldn't move in that direction. She strained and heaved but her legs wouldn't obey. She looked down at them in horror. She couldn't move away. Could only do what God wanted her to do. God wanted her to follow this evil twisty man with the leering eyes and the gnashing teeth. God made no sense. Surely God knew that this was Cerberus? Cerberus was The Enemy. Don't make me follow him God, please.

**FOLLOW HIM**

She put her hands to her head, the voices were gibbering inside her skull, soothing and repetitive so she joined them: "Nonononononononono..."

**FOLLOW HIM**

So she turned around and followed him and he led her through dark paths and she saw the little blue bodies that slowly danced in place and the recorded voices that told her story of how her body was given back to her even though her brain wasn't there any more so she wasn't really real and she shot as he directed and she killed the mechanical people with their robot arms and their robot legs and their beady little eyes and then another twisty man joined them and he was bleeding so the dark man made her fix him up but she didn't like his sinister smile oh no so she watched him very very carefully I've got my eye on you and then they went to where the shuttle was kept and the blue eyes appeared which belonged to the voice and the blue eyes didn't like the sinister smile either so there was a bang and he fell down dead and she wanted to leave but she couldn't so she kept going and going and going and all the while inside her head was the sound of screaming the wailing of damned souls as her soul was now damned as the voices in concert sent up a symphony of cacophonous sound and she screamed inside her head with them and they were together forever and she'd never be alone any more never be herself never be Shepard again she was Cerberus now she was The Enemy and everyone would hate her and Kaidan oh my love and battered her fists against the unbreakable walls of her invisible prison and she screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed...


End file.
